Cru Ministry Days

Cru Omaha is a part of a larger group of Cru staff who work specifically with high school and middle school students across the nation and around the world. We all gathered last month in Fort Collins, CO, for a few days of "Ministry Days" together before the Cru15 conference (the 10-day staff conference for all of the thousands of Cru staff together). 

There are several hundred "Cru - High School" staff, focused on reaching high school and middle school students. And Cru Omaha is just one of the many locations where staff serve. If we could add to these several hundred (pictured above), and include all of the many, many volunteers who are coached by our staff - we would be overflowing into many photos! A key part of "Cru - High School" and what makes it so impactful in the lives of high school and middle school students, is the partnerships and volunteers who are an integral part of this movement of reaching students for Jesus.

We are thankful to be part of this amazing group of staff, and were greatly encouraged and motivated as we heard from our leaders and as we connected with other staff while in Fort Collins. We love how the focus of our time together is always, first of all, on Jesus - not on strategies or plans, but on keeping our main focus on the main thing.

Click to read more about the ministry of Cru - High School.

(Photo: courtesy of Jim Trewin)

Cru Omaha Lock-In

It was a very full fall season of activity with Cru Omaha! Our number of campuses where we have Cru has grown to nine, with the opening up of Cru with Bellevue East. Another campus will be opening up in the next few months, as well. Our volunteers are what make it all happen, and we are very grateful for more volunteers coming on board these past few months. More are currently in the process of applying to join our amazing group of 25+ volunteers! 

An annual event that we hold for our students for the various campuses groups together is our Lock-In at the Omaha Downtown YMCA. The staff there are so gracious to host us for the all-night event, and our part-time staff guy, Jake, does a great job of giving leadership to this event. 

Here's a photo of the group taken in the early morning hours.

Our guest speaker, Andy Allan, drove up from Lincoln where he is the Cru leader of the college student movement there. His talk (at 1 am!) resonated with the students in a deep way. Mike, another staff guy also from Lincoln, shared his story of coming to know Christ. 

Both talks were perfect for our students to hear, and we received many positive comments afterwards. Here are a few ...

I really like this topic and I want to see people for how Jesus sees them.

I decided to make a fresh start.

This was exactly what I needed to hear.

It's good to know that I'm not alone.

I want to see the world as God sees it.

Tonight I feel like God has redeemed me.

We praise God for working in students lives that night. Thank you for your prayers for Cru High. Please pray for these students, and for others in our campus groups, that they will be changed forever by the love of Jesus.

DCC High

Every year between Christmas and New Years, our students travel to a Cru conference. For many years, we took students to the FastBreak Conference in the Twin Cities, and beginning in 2012, our students now travel to Denver for DCC (Denver Christmas Conference). This conference, planned primarily for college students, now welcomes our high school students with a special track geared especially for them.

Our group of six students came from three different campuses in our Cru Omaha area ... Central High and South High in Omaha, and Blair High. A smaller group than usual, as others who wanted to go had to stay home for family events, or sports events which were going on at the same time. We were joined by other high school students from Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado.

An incredible opportunity for our students, as they joined over a thousand college students to hear great speakers, attend helpful seminars, and participate in meaningful worship. The Cru staff in Colorado went the extra mile to make us feel welcome - giving our students a greatly reduced rate, setting aside rooms for us to hold our small group meetings in (photos above), and providing us with four amazing young adult interns to walk through the conference with the high school students, and lead the small group times. And we're grateful, too, for the great leadership of Jake, our part-time staff guy - he was amazing.

One afternoon our students participated in an outreach called Poverty Experience. They walked to a Ross's Store in downtown Denver, and purchased clothing items to donate to a nearby homeless shelter. However, on their way to the shelter, they came upon a number of homeless people including a family with two young children, and were able to give out their items of clothing directly to those in need. It was a moving experience for them, and one of the highlights of their time in Denver.

For each meal we walked together to 16th Street, a street filled with shops and little restaurants. The group of high school students bonded well. We were also so thankful to have Bill Kollar (in plaid shirt in photo above) with our group - he came from our Cru High headquarters in Orlando, and was a great help during DCC.

Now the students are back home, and also back at their high schools starting out another semester. Please pray that the truths they were impacted with will stay with them, and that God will use them greatly for His purposes on each of their campuses this coming semester.

Cru High Staff Team

What a privilege it is to serve together with others of like mind and heart! On a mission to Win! Build! and Send! middle school and high school students. With the mind and heart to ...

Build spiritual movements

on every campus

so that every student

has a chance to know and follow Jesus Christ.

These two photos were taken exactly one week ago today while our Cru Omaha staff team was in Colorado for our every-other-year Cru Staff Conference. Although most of our time was spent in meetings with all of the U.S. based Cru staff (nearly 5,000), we also had some sessions with just the Cru High School staff. The ministry within Cru that is focused on reaching middle school and high school students.

Besides the staff pictured here (and there are some staff who are missing from the photo), there are many, many volunteers who come alongside us in this mission. On our Cru Omaha team alone, we have about 25-30 volunteers who work together with us! Wouldn't it be fun to have a photo of all of us together - staff, and also volunteers, from each city where Cru High School is active?

We are so thankful to be part of the mission of this Cru High School team. Our leader, Darryl Smith (to the very right in the photo) was with us here in Omaha this past spring for a few days of school assemblies. We are grateful for his leadership, always pointing us to Jesus and following Him as our First Love. And all else will flow from this as we reach out to students.

Cru Staff Conference 2013

Every other summer we travel to Fort Collins, Colorado, to join thousands of other Cru staff for 7-10 days of learning and training. This year our whole staff team was able to be there - and we met for a lunch together on the first full day of staff conference (see photo below).

Staff Conference (on the campus of Colorado State University) was divided into two main sections: several days with Cru High School staff together (about 300 of us from across our nation) ... and then six days with all of Cru staff together (about 5,000!). There are many different ministries under Cru - ministry to high school students, college students, to families, military, inner city, teachers, businessmen and women, Jesus Film ministry, and many more categories. What an amazing time to all be together to learn and grow together.

Our whole time together was a very rich time of listening to our leaders, and other speakers who were brought in, attending afternoon seminars covering a wide variety of topics (all so helpful for life and ministry), and connecting with and learning from other staff.

Our opening night - welcoming all the new staff since the last conference two years ago ...

We as a staff team are taking home many insights and ideas from our time together, and we thank God for this very valuable time together. We will be processing all that we learned and will be integrating it into our hearts and minds in the days and weeks ahead. Of primary importance in our time together (as is true of all of our staff conferences) is that we are pointed to Jesus first of all, and encouraged to follow Him as our First Love. Above ministry, above anything else - for everything will flow from Him as we follow Him.

(For more photos, click here to view our Family/Ministry blog.)

Rocky Mountain Getaway 2013

Each June hundreds of students gather at the beautiful YMCA of the Rockies for the Cru Getaway conference. We were granted a medical leave for several weeks in June (to help a family member going through a difficult medical situation in Ohio), and Debi is on MPD leave this summer, raising needed funds for her staff account. So we relied totally on our two part-time staff guys, Jake & Andy, to transport our students to this conference. (Thanks, Jake & Andy!) They were accompanied by Clay, a local youth pastor. Our students joined other students from our region for an amazing, impactful Getaway at the foot of the Rockies near Estes Park.

The students met for great worship times, inspiring teaching, and also for smaller training seminars - all focused on helping them grow in their personal relationship with Jesus, and then in equipping them to make an impact on their campuses back home.

In one of the main sessions, one of our students, Allen (photo below), was given the opportunity to share his story of coming to know Jesus. From a tumultuous background, Christ has made a huge difference in his life - and now, Allen is active in sharing his faith with his peers at Omaha South High.

We thank God for the growth in our students' lives from attending the Getaway. Jeremy (pictured below), one of our Cru Fort Calhoun students, was one of those who was greatly impacted by the speakers and training sessions. Please pray for Allen and Jeremy, as well as all the other students who were at the Getaway - that God will continue to use the lessons taught there in their lives ... and also in other students' lives as they hear what God did during that time.

Thank you for your prayers that make all of this life-change possible. All praise to God for His work in the lives of students!

Cru Lock-In at Omaha YMCA

The Fremont YMCA has been the place where we have held our area-wide Lock-In for years, but this year we made the big step of moving the Lock-In to Omaha. More campuses are opening up in the Omaha area, and it just made more sense to have it there. Working out the details took some extra time, so our annual Cru Lock-In was held in January this year, instead of the usual early December time.

We were excited to have 65 students show up for our first Lock-In at the downtown YMCA! Students came from Blair, Fort Calhoun, and also from a number of Omaha schools, including Omaha South, Omaha North, Marrs Middle, and Bellevue West.

After registration of the students from 9-10 pm on Saturday, January 19, we had them gather in groups (mixing up the students from the various schools) for some opening get-acquainted activities. Our 19 staff and volunteers actively helped with this, and also throughout the entire night.

After a few hours of various sports activities in the YMCA, the students gathered back together for pizza ...

Following the pizza break, we gave the students an opportunity to hear one of our college volunteers share her story of her high school days, and of coming to know and follow Jesus. Then, Lee Bickerstaff, on staff with Cru's college ministry, shared with the students how they could know God personally.

Of the 65 students present, there were quite a few who expressed interest in learning more (for some, it was their first exposure to Cru High School), and we also praise God that 14 of the students who were at the Lock-In, responded on the comment cards that they desire to put their faith in Christ.

Please join us in thanking God for a GREAT night together with these 65 students - for the 19 staff and volunteers who helped - and for lasting impact on all of the students as a result.

The pizza boxes were emptied, everyone made it home safely the next morning, we developed a great relationship with the staff at the downtown Omaha YMCA (they have invited us to come there for future Cru events) - and we pray that God will continue to draw these 65 students closer and closer to Him. Please pray for our various Cru ministries as we touch base with these, and other students, in the coming days and weeks ...

Education Majors Project

Staff and participants at the Education Majors Project - Debi is on the far right

Debi, full-time staff with Cru Omaha, had an amazing opportunity this past summer to help with an Education Majors Project in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This project was for Education Major students who have a desire to share Christ as teachers in the public schools.

The Education Majors Project was a four-day conference to "train, inform, and cast vision for future teachers to impact students for Jesus Christ." Debi was privileged to lead her group of college students through a "24 Hour Challenge" where they were given the "assignment" of launching a Cru movement on a middle or high school campus. In the process of brain-storming and learning from the material they were given, making phone calls with present Cru (Student Venture) leaders around the country, they learned much about how to run a successful Cru ministry in a public school setting.

After the four days together, the Education Majors college students then took on leadership as 250 high school students, staff, and volunteers arrived for the five-day Myrtle Beach Getaway Conference. This hands-on time impacting middle and high school students was also a valuable learning experience for the Education Majors college students.

Debi, Rylee, and Abbie

Debi was a great asset to both the Education Majors Project and the following Myrtle Beach Getaway. She loved helping with both of these events, and also is so great at connecting one-on-one with the girls. Two of the college gals on the project were from here in our Omaha area. And an amazing result of their summer project is that they have now offered to help as volunteers on our Cru Omaha team during this coming school year! Debi is actively working together with them in preparation for running Cru (Student Venture) at Marrs Middle School in Omaha!

A special thanks to Debi for sharing these photos, and also much of this information with us!

Students Share about FastBreak

Omaha South SV

Students from our area who went to the SV FastBreak conference in the Twin Cities between Christmas and New Years, shared their experiences with their peers back home at their next SV meetings. The top two photos show the meeting at South High School in Omaha, and the lower two photos were taken at the Fort Calhoun SV meeting. Blair High SV students also shared at their next meeting, but we don't have photos to show.

At South High in Omaha (above), Shayn shared about how we all went to the Mall of America during FastBreak and took the initiative to get into spiritual conversations with shoppers. He said that was a highlight for him, and taught him that he could do that with his peers at South. Josh from Fort Calhoun SV (below) shared things he learned from various speakers and then provided questions for small group discussion of what he learned.

Fort Calhoun High SV

FastBreak was a valuable experience for our students who went from our area. Besides the main teaching sessions and seminars, they also participated in small discussion groups each night back in their rooms. One of our college volunteers, Andrew, shared this about our guys small group that he led each night:

"I really honestly felt small groups went well this year. The group was very open and honest throughout the whole experience, and I really felt great progress was made spiritually for the students this week. There were real walls being broken down. I also know that the Blair and Fort Calhoun guys were talking about starting some sort of accountability group because of the week, so that may end up being really awesome, too. I think the most important thing we talked about this week was really being bold and courageous and I think that these guys will really achieve that."

SV FastBreak

The Twin Cities, MN, is where two of our staff team, two of our college volunteers, and 13 students from our area were from Dec. 28 through January 1st.

Every year between Christmas and Yew Years we take students to a regional Student Venture FastBreak Conference in the Twin Cities. This year we had students attending from four area schools: Fort Calhoun, Blair, Omaha South, and Omaha Street School.

The students were involved in various worship times, training seminars, and had the opportunity to hear great speakers in the main sessions. The theme of the conference was FUSED (as in abiding in Christ from John 15).

One of our high school student leaders co-led one of the seminars together with a student leader from the Twin Cities. Josh and Abby led the students deeper into understanding the power of God through prayer, and the great resource we have in communicating with God.

Our students participated in a day of outreach, where they put into practice some of the things they learned. In the photo below, they are on their way to the Mall of America, where they initiated spiritual conversations with shoppers at the Mall of America. One of our students from Omaha South High shared later that this time was a highlight for him, and gave him courage and desire to share of his faith with his peers back at his high school.

New Year's Eve was a highlight, as the one hundred and thirty high school FastBreak students joined with TCX, the college conference going on at the same time as FastBreak, for a big New Year's Celebration. They welcomed the New Year in with a time of worship and prayer, followed by balloons and celebration.

Thanking God for all that He did in the hearts of students during FastBreak. Please pray for each of them as they have returned to their homes and their schools, that they will continue to be impacted in deep ways with God's love and His truth, and that they will make a difference for eternity on their campuses.